False Claims: What They Won’t Tell You

Jeff Rasansky, managing partner of Rasansky Law Firm, is an aggressive Dallas personal injury lawyer with more than 25 years of legal experience.

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One of the things that nursing home abuse attorneys can represent clients for is the practice of nursing homes filing false claims for treatments that are not rendered.

There was recently a lawsuit filed in Kentucky for this type of claim against a nursing home provider that has been the subject of several other lawsuits in the past. Not only do these types of false claims put the family on the hook for all the money involved in rendering the treatments, they constitute one of the worst types of abuse in nursing home environments.

Sloppy care.

Anybody in a nursing home who requires extensive care to be rendered to them is certain to accumulate very high bills during their stay. The family has the right to assume that the care they are paying for is being rendered in a competent and compassionate manner. In some cases, the nursing home staff fails to render that care and puts the patient at risk of illness and death. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find a reliable source of information in these situations. The person who is actually receiving the care may suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia and may not be a reliable witness. The family sometimes has to rely on their instincts and their observational skills to see if there is a problem.

Some of the things you’ll want to watch out for include bedsores, infections, rapidly deteriorating conditions and sudden weight loss. If somebody is confined to their bed most of the time because of their physical health having deteriorated, they should be regularly repositioned to ensure that they do not develop bedsores. Infections sometimes occur because the patient has a weakened immune system but, if they occur over and over again, it may be a sign that they are not receiving as much attention as the family believes.

Speaking to an attorney after the victim has been removed from the facility is a good idea. When people seek compensation in these cases, it is oftentimes because they have already paid huge medical bills to the nursing home facility without their loved one ever having received the care for which they were billed. This is not only unfair: it also puts the person who was supposed to be receiving that care and genuine risk as most of the treatments that the family is expecting them to receive are genuinely matters of life and death.

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